Excerpt from Everyman's Library: Classical It is almost as hard to distinguish between Socrates and Xenophon. For the Memorabilia is as much a work of art as any Platonic dialogue, though the manner of it is as different as was Xenophon from Plato. We are only better ofl because Xenophon wrote much besides his Socratic dis courses. In his histories, his ideal life of Cyrus, his many anecdotes on all subjects from hunting to financial reform in Athens and the glories of the Spartan constitution, he has revealed his own character plainly enough: a thorough sportsman in the best sense of that word, an ideal country gentleman with a taste for soldiering and a turn for practical ideas: religious in a rather conventional sense, with strong prejudices that spoil him as a historian, redeemed from the commonplace by his thorough soundness. Thus if we do not know what is Socrates in the Memorabilia, we can some times say what is Xenophon. It is clear, for example, that the Economist, though a Socratic dialogue, is almost entirely an expression of Xenophon's views, while in the Memorabilia we come on something quite different. We are getting, however indirectly, into contact with the impres sion Socrates actually made on Xenophon; but as certainlv. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.